The Converso Problematic in Larra and Galdós (Spain)

Abstract:
The main objective of this paper is to study
representative works of Mariano José de Larra and Benito Perez Galdós
and how they manifest the religious, political, economic, social and
literary environment surrounding the continued isolation of the Spanish
Converso community in the 19th century.

The Moors were politically displaced during the 800-year process of
Christian Reconquest, but the symbiotic, caste relationship that
developed between the Moors, the Christians and the Jews had
disarticulated life in the Christian zones into a caste-specific soci-
economic system. The Jews/Conversos assumed the material
component of that system since Judaism, unlike Catholicism, gives man
a mandate to function on earth. The edict of expulsion/conversion of
1492 did not provide for the assimilation of the Jews' earthly value-
system when it provided for the absorption of Jewish individuals. A
contradictory situation ensued wherein the Conversos were Christian,
yet retained the Judaic character of their occupations and socio-
economic values.

The resulting intermeshing of complex, contradictory social,
economic, political and literary factors that make up the Converso
problematic, not only affected the whole of Spanish culture, and survived
into the 20th century, but became the focal point of that culture.

The Romanticism of Larra and the Realistic/Naturalistic novel of
Galdós demonstrate the pivotal position of the Converso problematic
during Spain's period of transition from traditional to modern society.
Both authors document the social, economic and political bankruptcy of
the aristocracy and the rise of the capitalist middle class whose power
was based on education and economic activity, two factors that
provoked a destructive, reactionary conservatism in Spain because they
were invariably considered "cosas de Judíos."

We see, in Larra's play, No más mostrador, and in Galdós' Fortunata y
Jacinta and Torquemada series, that Conversos constituted a closed
society and possessed a strong, internal cohesiveness that might even
be called "racism." Yet both authors came to the same conclusion: they
considered the Converso the key to modernization in the Spanish
context because he integrated the Jewish mandate to function on earth
with Christian religious aspirations within the authentic, historical
determinants of Spanish society.